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 Animal IdenticationDoes Not Equal Food Safety
So should consumers expect any less when it comes tofood? Everything from public opinion polls to the explo-sive growth of programs that connect consumers directly tofarmers show that consumers don’t want mystery meat —they want to know what they’re eating and whether it is safe.Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)and big meat companies are trying to use consumers astheir cover for pushing a livestock tracking system thatcould permanently change the structure of the meat indus-try, and not for the better.The tracking program is the National Animal Identifica-tion System (NAIS), a registry for livestock and for thepremises where animals live or visit. The stated purposeof the system is to aid government responses to outbreaksof animal disease, and pressure for the program increasedafter the discovery of mad cow disease in the UnitedStates. Supporters of the program point to a demand for“traceability” by export customers in countries like Japanand Korea. Right now, the federal government says theprogram is voluntary, but some states have forced livestock producers into the system against their will, and state gov-ernments and trade associations are putting tremendouspressure on producers to sign up.Many farmers and ranchers don’t want anything to do withthis program because industry and the USDA seem intenton taking tracking to a ridiculous level, with the potentialto force small farmers to track every chicken, or requiresomeone who keeps a horse or a couple of goats to regis-ter them with the government. To make matters worse,the rules for the program are geared towards the largestproducers, who use confinement and other methods thatmake animals easier to track and benefit from economiesof scale for purchasing electronic tracking devices andequipment. USDA estimates show that among livestock producers that don’t currently tag their beef cattle, thesmallest producers — those with less than 50 head of cattle— would incur the highest costs.USDA and the meat industry — while always officially careful to characterize NAIS as an animal health program— tend to invoke improving meat safety as a selling pointfor the program. But NAIS does not offer consumers any assurances of food safety.
Why NAIS Doesn’t Mean Safer Meat
Tracking Ends at the Slaughterhouse.
As recallsof millions of pounds of meat become a regular featureof the nightly news, a tracking system might seem worththe effort. But the tracking capability of NAIS stops at theslaughterhouse, so it doesn’t help the government or retail-ers track contaminated meat back to its source.Consumer groups have actually been calling on USDA for years to do a better job tracing what happens to meat whenit leaves the slaughterhouse and goes out to thousandsof smaller plants to be ground into hamburger or furtherprocessed. Contamination with
 E. coli
happens duringthe slaughter process. So when contamination is found atplants that don’t slaughter animals, but only process meat,chances are that there is other product out there that camefrom the same source and might be contaminated. ButUSDA often refuses to trace back to the slaughtering plant,even though the agency already has the authority to do so.
C
onsumers get a lot of information about the things they buy, whether it’smonitoring the progress of a package making its way across the country or thelabel in a shirt that says where the fabric was made and the final product assembled.
FOOD
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